Getting al-Zarqawi and Other Bad Guys
I was explaining to my seven year old yesterday about our nation's killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq by dropping bombs on top of him. (The conversation was prompted by a radio report we heard in the car.) She wanted to know if that was a good thing, if he was a "bad guy", and other stuff of that nature. It occurred to me that the real, thorough answers to her questions are deeply complex, having to do with just war theory and the appropriate use of force to "get the bad guys". I don't want to get in to that here, and I'm no expert on those questions. Suffice to say my daughter isn't worried that our nation did the wrong thing in this one particular instance.
Thinking about al-Zarqawi, though, made me think again about the orcs and the other nasty creatures fighting on Sauron's side in Lord of the Rings. Not that al-Zarqawi was an orc or anything else less than human (though he did seem as close to a monster as a human can become). Actually, that's what got me thinking -- al-Zarqawi was a human being created in God's image, and we had a duty to give him all the benefits of just war theory and other standards for appropriate treatment. The fact that appropriate treatment can involve having 500-pound bombs dropped on your head in certain circumstances doesn't lessen the significance or earnest morality behind just war theory and all the thinking that's gone into what's appropriate and not appropriate in warfare.
But in LOTR, the bad guys are really bad, and they deserve to die, period. End of discussion. The men of the West never had troubled consciences about whether they should be imposing sanctions on Mordor instead of destroying it; they didn't ever bother with taking orcs prisoner to hold until the cessation of hostilities. (And none ever surrendered that I recall.) This approach has undeniable advantages in warfare -- no Abu Graibs in Middle Earth! Or Andersonvilles, either. Of course, "take no prisoners" is barbaric and evil in human warfare, and since humans are the only sentient beings we're familiar with in reality, we've never been able to implement "take no prisoners" in warfare with a clean conscience (nor should we). About the only real-world equivalent to orcs would be if the Earth were invaded by aliens from another world. Think "War of the Worlds" and recall that it was biological warfare (intentional or no) that saved the day for humanity. Even then, I'm not too sure about the morality of the indiscriminate killing of sentient beings.
I think the pure evil of the enemy in LOTR is one reason (among very, very many excellent reasons) that the book is so popular and the war against Sauron is so heroic and even romantic. It's hard to reproduce that in real life when the people you have to kill are fellow image-bearers.
And I haven't even pointed out that there are no orc women and children in the book. See what I mean?
I was explaining to my seven year old yesterday about our nation's killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq by dropping bombs on top of him. (The conversation was prompted by a radio report we heard in the car.) She wanted to know if that was a good thing, if he was a "bad guy", and other stuff of that nature. It occurred to me that the real, thorough answers to her questions are deeply complex, having to do with just war theory and the appropriate use of force to "get the bad guys". I don't want to get in to that here, and I'm no expert on those questions. Suffice to say my daughter isn't worried that our nation did the wrong thing in this one particular instance.
Thinking about al-Zarqawi, though, made me think again about the orcs and the other nasty creatures fighting on Sauron's side in Lord of the Rings. Not that al-Zarqawi was an orc or anything else less than human (though he did seem as close to a monster as a human can become). Actually, that's what got me thinking -- al-Zarqawi was a human being created in God's image, and we had a duty to give him all the benefits of just war theory and other standards for appropriate treatment. The fact that appropriate treatment can involve having 500-pound bombs dropped on your head in certain circumstances doesn't lessen the significance or earnest morality behind just war theory and all the thinking that's gone into what's appropriate and not appropriate in warfare.
But in LOTR, the bad guys are really bad, and they deserve to die, period. End of discussion. The men of the West never had troubled consciences about whether they should be imposing sanctions on Mordor instead of destroying it; they didn't ever bother with taking orcs prisoner to hold until the cessation of hostilities. (And none ever surrendered that I recall.) This approach has undeniable advantages in warfare -- no Abu Graibs in Middle Earth! Or Andersonvilles, either. Of course, "take no prisoners" is barbaric and evil in human warfare, and since humans are the only sentient beings we're familiar with in reality, we've never been able to implement "take no prisoners" in warfare with a clean conscience (nor should we). About the only real-world equivalent to orcs would be if the Earth were invaded by aliens from another world. Think "War of the Worlds" and recall that it was biological warfare (intentional or no) that saved the day for humanity. Even then, I'm not too sure about the morality of the indiscriminate killing of sentient beings.
I think the pure evil of the enemy in LOTR is one reason (among very, very many excellent reasons) that the book is so popular and the war against Sauron is so heroic and even romantic. It's hard to reproduce that in real life when the people you have to kill are fellow image-bearers.
And I haven't even pointed out that there are no orc women and children in the book. See what I mean?
posted by Under The Mountain | 7:41 PM
1 Comments:
Oy. You might have just gone ahead and told her where her little brother came from.
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